2007 he had to undergo an operation after a gastric hemorrhage. He died in New York on September 24, 2007 due to heart disease and cancer with which he had been suffering for some years, and he was buried a week later in his hometown in Spain, in Rociana's San Fernando Cemetery, in the family pantheon alongside his only son, Manny. The author had been suffering from health problems since two years prior, when he succumbed to heart surgery for five by-passes. The president of the Betanzos Foundation, Antonio Ramírez, said the writer died in a New York City hospital after several days of agony. In the U.S., he was survived by his wife, Amalia, as well as by the widow of his son. Personal life It was in 1952 during one of his trips to New York that he met a woman from Bronx who would become his wife, Amalia Migues, the only daughter of a Spaniard – from Pontevedra, Galicia, who emigrated to America as a child – and of a Puerto Rican mother, from Santurce. Odon Betanzos saw in her his own rebellion, and along with her intelligence, administrative ability, talent and understanding, she became irresistible. At that time, Amalia was a professor of cytology at New York University, a private university. The courtship was brief – just a year or so – and they married on March 21, 1953. On January 14, 1954, his only son was born, and he gave him his father's and his paternal grandfather's name, Manuel. The poet wanted to perpetuate the name of his ancestors in the son God had granted him. Manny wasn't only of high moral integrity and values, but he was also friendly, kind, intelligent, enthusiastic, thoughtful, very generous, and with a wonderful sense of humor. An avid reader, he was a marvelous son and an amazing person who studied literature, history, and social work at college as well as law. Because of the closeness and love they shared, the author was chosen by his son to be his best man the day of his wedding at St. Patrick's Cathedral in NYC, where he married a young lady he had met the first day of college; the same young woman the poet had secretly hoped his son would one day marry. In September 1993, the accidental death of his only son, aged 39, completely crushed Odon, and marked